Fixing transit to be a marathon

Infrastructure repairs, new, efficient vehicles needed

While the CTA and Pace averted steep service cuts and fare hikes with passage last week of the $530 million transit funding package, slow and crowded trains and buses -- commuters' biggest complaints -- won't disappear.

The money will go to keep trains and buses operating, not to finance vital construction projects or buy new trains, buses and related infrastructure, officials said.

"This really just solves the current problem of budget deficits and service cuts," CTA President Ron Huberman said. "There are no big buckets of extra money to go beyond maintaining existing services."

The transit agencies say much more help is needed -- and soon -- because a deteriorating CTA system is plagued by miles of rail slow zones, crumbling viaducts and aging, fuel-guzzling buses that have logged as many as a half-million miles and should have been junked years ago.

The Regional Transportation Authority says the CTA, Metra and Pace combined still need at least $10 billion to shore up, modernize and expand the mass-transit system in the six-county Chicago metropolitan area over the next five years. By RTA estimates, similar efforts over the next 30 years carry a mind-boggling $57 billion price tag.

Independent transportation experts say a major reinvestment in the region's mass-transit infrastructure is needed but the transit agencies must continue to achieve financial reforms called for in a recent study by the Illinois auditor general.

Transit officials also must stop passing the buck, the experts said.

"I heard the old leadership of the CTA and the new leadership say, 'It's an old system, what do you expect?'" said Joseph Schofer, a transportation expert at Northwestern University. "But the fact is that it became an old system one year at a time."

A derailment and fire in the Blue Line subway in 2006 publicly exposed a years-old pattern of deferred maintenance and inadequate oversight by management at the CTA.

Some policy experts expressed relief that a poorly funded statewide capital-spending plan that was bandied about in Springfield never came to a vote. It was tied to an expansion of casinos in the state.

"The good news of not having a capital bill now is that the only capital bill they've been considering is woefully deficient," said Jim LaBelle, deputy director of Chicago Metropolis 2020, a policy think tank.

The bill would have provided about $450 million over three years for mass transit, far short of the needed $1.4 billion a year to maintain and improve the state's infrastructure, LaBelle said.

Despite uncertain prospects over when state lawmakers might pass new capital funding, the CTA is moving ahead on a few major investments.

The CTA is borrowing money from expected future federal funds in order to rush completion of $91 million in Blue Line track work. The goal is to eliminate rail slow zones on the Blue Line from Addison Street to O'Hare International Airport by the end of the year.

But the CTA still needs passage of a state capital bill before 2009 to leverage the federal funds and replenish the money being used to improve the slow zones, officials said.

Meanwhile, Huberman will likely seek CTA board approval as early as this week to spend $120 million in mostly operating funds to lease 150 new diesel-electric hybrid buses. The CTA expects to save almost $7 million a year in fuel consumption and repairs by operating the new buses on routes now served by 17-year-old vehicles.

Transit experts are looking for the CTA to operate leaner and smarter under performance-based management strategies Huberman is introducing.

"With the doomsday crisis averted, it gives the transit agencies time to sit back and think of ways to deliver a higher-quality service," Schofer said. "I worry less about what the system looks like than the fact it is crowded and slow. That drives people away."

Schofer suggested the RTA, under the broad new powers it will wield under reform legislation linked to the transit funding increases, move quickly to create unified fares and coordinate service among all three transit agencies for riders transferring among Pace, Metra and the CTA.

The tax hike approved last week also will help foster a modest expansion of transit services, starting in the suburbs. The legislation established a $20 million annual suburban community mobility fund for Pace to create new transit services. Other near-term improvements that are now within reach thanks to the boost in operating subsidies include speeding up bus service by installing devices on buses to extend traffic signal cycles to reduce bunching, experts say.

But the new revenue raised through the modest increase in the region's general sales tax -- 0.25 percent in Cook County and 0.5 percent in the five collar counties -- will not raise enough funds for the CTA and Metra to run more trains during rush periods or offer new transit routes that would entice more commuters to leave their cars at home.